Morton skulls hold controversial history

Anthropology professor Janet Monge has CT scanned over 200 skulls of America’s largest skull collection, creating Penn’s own “virtual museum.” The collection, which became the center of controversial research this past summer, is still sparking discussion.

150 people came to hear Monge speak about the skulls in the Penn Museum Wednesday night. She shared the history of controversy surrounding the research of Samuel Morton’s large collection of skulls and provided insight on how the collection may be used going forward.

Morton was a 19th-century evolutionary biologist who had an “obsession in collecting human skulls,” Monge said. He was also a “flaming racist.”

In his research, Morton found that European skulls were larger than African skulls and he took this information to assert that Europeans were more intelligent than Africans.

Stephen Gould, an evolutionary biologist, rose to counter Morton’s findings. Whereas Morton was a known racist, Gould “fought racism wherever he could in the world.” He wrote multiple publications passionately denouncing Morton’s research as skewed because of his racist biases.

“Gould was a legend in his field. Everything he said was essentially golden,” Monge said. However, Monge and her team of anthropologists took on the challenge of re-evaluating the skulls, culminating in a study published this past summer.

“It’s something that we necessarily did not want to delve into because Stephen J. Gould was a monstrous character … going against him put the fear of God in our hearts,” Monge said. On the other hand, she added, “I didn’t want it to seem like we were supporting the racism of Morton either.”

Still, Monge and her team continued and found that Morton’s original findings on skull size had been completely accurate: European skulls were in fact larger than those of Africans. Gould had completely fabricated his claims against Morton.

However, contrary to Morton’s beliefs, the skull sizes do not distinguish intelligence between races. Instead, Monge said that skull sizes are determined by the location of origins. Those of European descent tend to have larger bones and taller stature, explaining the larger skull sizes.

Now, Monge said, we should move on to consider what the collection of nearly 1,000 skulls can be used for in the future. “What can we boldly do with this collection?” she asked. The skulls will play a part in future research on sex differences as well as research involving health and diseases. “You cannot understand everything at once,” Monge said. “The scientific process has no end.”

Dominique Harrison, a Haverford College student in Monge’s course, said that she “can really see the skulls used to open up a discussion on race and what race is.”

“Plus, skulls are kind of bad-ass,” Keegan Fink, a member of Penn’s Archaeology Society, added. “And they will definitely have beneficial uses in the future in the medical field.”

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